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JAN MACIAG COMPLETES LISTED BARN CONVERSION
IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE

February 2010
Jan Maciag Architects have just completed the repair and conversion of the range of grade 2 listed barns in the village of Castor. The barns are to be used for office space. Phase 2 of the project has just commenced on site.The barns are predominantly of stone construction but with pantile and thatch roofs. The modifications are being carried out using a palette of natural and agricultural techniques and materials that will enable the reuse of these buildings for contemporary use.

NEW GATES AT WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE, WENTWORTH

February, 2010. Consent is being sought for the erection of new stone and iron gates at the Octagonal Lodge entrance into the Park at Wentworth Woodhouse. The great house at Wentworth, with its 365 bedrooms, was the result of many years of building activity including the contribution of Flitcroft and Carr of York.

The chosen architectural style and configuration is one that hints at old and mysterious origins whilst addressing the pragmatic requirements of asymmetry and contemporary usage. The design of the gate piers is in the “artisan Mannerist” baroque of the late 17th or early 18th centuries. It suggests a now lost function for this entrance even though its architectural form remains.

The proposed design for the new gates and piers is in the spirit of an anonymous architect/master builder working for either the 2nd Earl of Strafford or the 1st Marquess of Rockingham to designs and ideas he was vaguely familiar with from Jones or Wren and wishing to emulate. It could, equally, be the work of Henry Flitcroft in a Baroque interlude of joyfully shifting scales such as he displayed at Woburn Abbey or St Giles. Its main idea is that of a square central element (the metal gates) flanked and supported by lower arched elements and oversized scrolls.

The rusticated piers are attenuated ionic pedestals that rely on the other elements both for visual support and cohesion. The concept of a wide central opening for vehicles and two smaller side openings has origins in the Roman triumphal arch as well as the Holbein Gate, London (1532). As mentioned above, the scrolled flanking elements have roots back to S M Novella, Il Gesu and Inigo Jones’ design for the west front of St Paul’s cathedral. The same device was employed by Christopher Wren at Temple Bar, London

The above are projects that have been featured in the past as news on this site. For more projects by this member go to link on Full Members Lists